Newt Gingrich Auditioning for Job at CNN?

A brutal political media war appears to be brewing between Newt Gingrich and Fox News. It has long been said that Gingrich viewed Fox News as a network that wasn’t on his side, but now he’s taking it to a whole new level.

During a meeting with 18 Delaware Tea Party leaders here on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich lambasted FOX News Channel, accusing the cable network of having been in the tank for Mitt Romney from the beginning of the Republican presidential fight. An employee himself of the news outlet as recently as last year, he also cited former colleagues for attacking him out of what he characterized as personal jealousy.

“I think FOX has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting — to which RealClearPolitics was granted access — at Wesley College. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of FOX, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of FOX. That’s just a fact.”

Fox hit back in a strongly personal attack. In a statement provided to the Guardian, it said: “This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN – that’s the kind of man he is. Not to mention that he’s still bitter about the fact that we terminated his contributor contract.”

While I find Fox News less and less tolerable each day, the suggestion by Gingrich that Fox News is more biased than CNN is laughable at best. CNN is nothing short of a race baiting, corporate extension of the Obama agenda and message. This all sounds like sour grapes from Gingrich over the fact that Fox News didn’t help prop up a narrative that suggested Gingrich could win. While I agree Fox News did often float Romney as the front-runner, even when that fact wasn’t entirely clear, I don’t think it outrageous to suggest Romney had/has an advantage in the race. That is fact, whether we like it or not.

Media companies and most journalists report the news as they see it. CNN and some of the more radical networks report the news the way they want to see it. Fox News, I believe, reports the news as they see it (just as we do here). The way they saw it, Romney was likely going to be the nominee.

Which, let’s face it, is what most of us have seen this entire cycle. Yes, we fought it and wanted to change it, but it’s still what most of us believed would ultimately happen. And I don’t believe that in thinking so we were “biased” against any other candidates. I think that was just an understanding of the situation as it exists.

Either way this back-and-forth between Gingrich and Fox News is ridiculous and distracting. In my opinion, that is.